Winnipeg: Creative heart of the north campaign
Economic Development Winnipeg’s marketing department developed a digital campaign to increase awareness in key creative markets that Winnipeg offers great creative tax incentives and is an ideal location for foreign direct investment attraction and expansion. The campaign was targeted to executives in Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Montreal.
The goal of this campaign was to increase awareness for film, gaming and interactive digital media companies to learn more about expanding their business into Winnipeg by promoting our key selling points, like Winnipeg’s connectivity and access to other work, talent and incentives.
Demographics
The campaign was targeted to C-Suite level executives and decision makers at these companies. It was important to show a city with great quality of life, as even though the C-Suite level executives are making the decisions, they still had to present the location to the production teams and talent as a great place to live.
Method
From October 2024 to March 2025, an advertising campaign was run through LoKnow. Campaign measurements included impressions, click-through rate (CTR) to landing page, cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-mille (CPM).
Through the LoKnow campaign, primary target platforms included Google Search, Video advertising, YouTube advertising and social media advertising (through Economic Development Winnipeg’s LinkedIn page).
From May 2024 to June 2024, a separate paid LinkedIn ad campaign was run to promote the Manitoba Creative Industries tax credit to high-level decision makers in Montreal.
Creative deliverables included Creative Industries sector video, the /creative-industries landing page and digital advertising (video, social and retargeting), including a Creative Industries Tax Credit LinkedIn ad.
Effectiveness
Overall, the LoKnow campaign impact generated over 2 million impressions and over 7,000 clicks, costing an average of just over eight dollars CPC.
Awareness was the main goal of this campaign, so from this perspective, YouTube advertising was the top performing platform, generating over 800,000 impressions with over 30% completion rate.
Video advertising made up close to half of the overall impressions at 45% and over 60% of the total clicks in this campaign, meeting the original objective of this campaign.
The LinkedIn ad campaign was viewed over 600,000 times by target users.
The Google Search campaign generate just over 7,000 impressions, over 400 clicks and a 5.9% CTR, performing over twice as well as the global benchmark at 2.4%.
The separate LinkedIn ad campaign reached just under 170,000 impressions and almost 1,000 clicks.
Because the format of the ad was video, YouTube and video advertising were the top performing platforms. The strong CTR in the search category indicates users in all geographical areas are very motivated to learn more.
Landing page: https://www.investwinnipeg.com/creative-industries
Campaign report: https://www.beautiful.ai/player/-ODO3_6U0-ZMjPy2ZHFe/Creative-Industries-Report
